Friday, March 04, 2016

David Brooks Puts Donald Trump On Double-Secret Probation

This was not a speech that was intended for me. And although one side-effect of President Business's Mitt Romney's speech will be to give involuntary ruling-class sympathy boners to people like David Brooks, it was not intended for Mitten's fellow entitled oligarchs either. Presumably it was intended to sweet-talk the hoi polloi into once again sacrificing their dreams of greatness for another party-approved corpse.

Now, at long last, the big guns are being brought to bear. Now, at long last, some major Republicans like Mitt Romney are speaking up to lay waste to Donald Trump...

Yes, thank Heaven and Calvin Coolidge that the maître d' has finally shown up to toss the vulgarians out of Mr. Brooks' Very Nice Restaurant.

But the vulgarians ain't leaving, because the show ain't over yet. Hell, we're barely through the second half of our national Slobs Versus The Snobs marathon, which Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times seems to be blissfully unaware is one of America's most popular and enduring genre of American film, radio and teevee entertainment dating back at least to Charlie Chaplin (a good case could also be made that it dates back to The Odyssey, and that at least half of the New Testament is about scruffy outsiders finally getting over on rich, officious hypocrites.)

Of course to pull it off, every Slob Versus Snob comedy needs a wealthy, clueless stiff who can hit their marks and deliver long, windy, condescending orations about how lesser, scruffier mortals need to shape up and do as they are instructed by their economic and moral superiors. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago after Jeb(!) ran sobbing back to his Kennebunkport tree-fort never to be seen again:

The Margaret Dumont of the 2016 Republican campaign has left the set of A Day at the Races, never to return...

So now we'll get to see what Bizarro Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo Marx will make of of their game of anarchy in a sanitarium and at a horse race now that their favorite foil is gone for good.

And because the Comedy Gods are kind, here comes Mittens von Romney right on cue -- the most hilariously wrong delivery system for just the sort of Dean Wormer-style "You're finished at Faber!" upbraiding that no truly great Slob Versus Snob farce can do without.

And truckling along just behind Mittens, carrying his extra spats and emergency backup monocle, we find David Brooks, calling out Trump as a con man (which he most certainly is) in order to defend the last, pitiful remnants of Mr. Brooks' own corrupt snake-oil franchise.

Because for more than 20 years, Liberals have been crying in the wilderness, warning the nation that beneath its thin veneer of David Brooksian respectability, the Republican party was little more than a mob of bigots, con men, theocrats and oligarchs all united by their desire to strip the United States federal government down to the floor boards and get rich selling off the parts.

And for more than 20 years respectable Conservative frauds like David Brooks have been making a fabulous living by repackaging and reselling the same comforting lies about worry-wart hippies, Noble Whigs and Both Sides Being Equally Wrong All The Time About Everything over and over and over again to the same gullible chumps and political cowards.

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that Meddling Trump!

...In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?
The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts...

As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.

Bingo!

Because after years of stalemate the stars have aligned to give us these three leading Republican contenders for President of the United States the bigot con man, the unhinged theocrat and the fingerpuppet of the oligarchs.

And in the background, watching as the rising tide of Republican crazy threatens to swamp his Whig pleasure barge, we find David Brooks, practically ordering his readers to ignore what they can plainly see with their own eyes and begging Rich Daddy Mittens to use his magic plutocrat powers to make everything go back to the way it was before Donald Trump's Pandemonium Carnival rolled into town and crushed everyone else's patent medicine wagon.

9 comments:

This is almost sad - DFB is projecting that his own servile 'yes my master, anything you say' attitude towards the GOP establishment will be the response of the GOP Orc base who, rather than getting in line and obeying Mitt Romney, want, in the words of Steve Colbert, "to feast on his flesh' Their real problem is not that they really disagree with Trump on the issue; they hate the others, and they want more war, it's just he's not using his inside voice when talking about these things.

Cons gotta con just like haters gotta hate. From the smallest Republican town oligarchy to Wall Street and the Koch Brothers, Republicans are all about the grift, the fraud, the outright corruption, the sacking of the government Treasury for corporate subsidies of all sorts, the rent-seeking. Romney is a more stuffed shirt version of the short-fingered vulgarian, that's all.

The crackup might really, truly be happening this time. I notice from a quick perusal of Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier's Twitter feed that he's been completely focused on taking shots at the GOP, and glaringly missing are his usual empty-headed attempts to blame the fiasco on Obama's leadership or Hillary's email server.

If the GOP has gone so far around the bend that Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier can no longer live with himself if he keeps vomiting up both-siderist dipshittery and starts ripping into the GOP on the merits, maybe there's hope after all. I didn't think anything they did could lose him.

Also a request: The more I watch the Trump Shitshow lurch forth, the more I wish someone could do a youtube or photoshop that recreates the Gozer the Gozerian scene from Ghostbusters, except that instead of Ray accidentally choosing the Stay-puft marshmallow man as the destructor, some GOPer (McCain, Boner, McConnell are obvious choices) chooses Trump.

"The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts..."

It's the cons Trump disrupts... AND intends to take over for himself.

THAT's what they don't like. Plus the PTB & their sniveling suck up hacks, like DFB, attempt to fap themselves into believing that THEY are above the debased hoi polloi whom they are fleecing, robbing, plundering and pillaging. Trump, otoh, stands loud and proud in the midst of the rubes and sort of declares himself One. Of. THEM.

Quelle horreur to, you know, actually deign to identify with the lowly disgusting worms of the mob.

Well, Trump doesn't really identify with them. He's every bit as snobby and condescending as Lord Muckity Mitt. But Trump's willing to get down and dirty and not be ashamed of that.

The rest of the snobby GOP PTB are horrified, shocked, shocked, I tell you! Trump has ripped back the curtain. The horror, the horror... bring on the fainting couches for the pearl clutchers like DFB.

Great post DG. I'm wondering though,what with the GOP's ability to constantly deflect and project their craven insanity (with the help of the corporate owned media) that even in crazy times like this where it seems impossible for anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together could miss the obvious, that they'll just continue their obfuscation and refuse to look in the mirror dragging us into ever deeper circles of hell.